


One Quiet Night

by TaffingWhaler



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:59:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4298688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaffingWhaler/pseuds/TaffingWhaler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Names are nothing but a target for money, and the thought doesn’t settle well for a young whaler who looks to Daud for comfort</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Quiet Night

**Author's Note:**

> All named whalers are taken from in game, with Eirikur being a name offered by a friend for the OC whaler.

The nights after a mission were always the longest, most dreariest affairs.

Desk piled with loose papers, the light scratching of the pen bit through the silence in a pleasant hum, a comfort Daud had long since gotten used to. A letter here, future plans there, tedious in nature and unbearable in his sleepless haze.

If it wasn’t for the promise of coffee soon, he’d have abandoned all hope of continuing on with the work; the light drips from the coffee pot (a plain drip pot, stolen from a late noble a year previous) were soothing in sound, and the aroma, mouth-watering.

A few more letters to write and then a break - as long as the desk didn’t still feel so comfortable under his elbows.

The catch on the door shocked life through Daud’s exhausted veins, hand immediately settling on a blade resting by a nearby book (Thomas’s diary, he noticed, that’s probably been left for him to not-so-inconspicuously read again).  Hesitant footsteps, too loud to be sneaking, too quiet to be urgent, and Daud turned with a resigned sigh.

A whaler, grey coat, still just a recruit with dishevelled hair and a (very clear) lack of mask. He noted these in quick succession in his mind as the young man shuffled into his quarters, standing barely a step in the room and shaking like a sodden wolfhound pup.

Daud’s sharp stare in the dim light of a lamp wouldn’t help with that.

“What is it, boy?”

His voice was gravelly, tired, syllables not all formed, but enough to shock a spike of fear in the young recruit. More shuffling from uncertain feet, and Daud’s stare waned, weariness slipping in the droops of his eyelids. With a wave of his hand (coaxing, like a parent ushering a child closer), he turned back to the letters strewn hopelessly over the table, wincing at the ink stain that’d taken over most of his current work. Not that it mattered, the writing was crooked and full of mistakes he hadn’t noticed before.

A few moments past and the boy stepped forward, crossing the gap and hovering awkwardly at the edge of his desk (eyeing the coffee pot, Daud noticed with a squinted side glance).

“Couldn’t sleep, sir.”

A pitiful sound. It was light, hoarse, Daud couldn’t help but wonder just how young this child (because he was a child, dressed up in clothes that fit his height but hung off his frame like rags hanging off a weeper's corpse).  _You'll grow into them_ , was a regular chant from the older whalers, muscles built from years of training, their own uniform covered in the hints of old blood stains.

He clenched his jaw before he could let that train of thought further.

Stone faced, he scowled at the boy beside him, who'd taken to sit on the floor around the corner of his desk; a child too scared to face the monsters in the closet.

"So you disturb me, instead?"

It earnt him a shuddered form, retreating further behind the wood, barely glancing at him now.

"I couldn't  _sleep_ , sir."

Repetition, though somewhat defiant in nature, always implied more than airy words, and it wouldn't do for a master assassin to miss it, especially with a cowering student demanding something from him that belay all need for respect.

Daud took to ignoring the boy, scratching a few more words onto a letter and turning to the long desired coffee, pulling two mugs from behind a pile of books. He'd lose half tonight; a thought he wasn't enjoying.

"The mission was a mess," he said, as the silence began to draw out further than was comfortable. A glance back was all he needed — the boy had winced, cringed, clutched his legs tighter at his words. "A novice ended it."

"Galia attracted some guards; Thorpe had to help her."

"What's your name?"

"Eirikur, sir."

Daud knew the name — it was written in the log book haphazardly pushed to one side. The executor of the most recent assassination, despite how he shouldn't have been close to the target to begin with. A complete mess of a mission that still somehow ended in something resembling success; no casualties amongst the whalers, and they'd escaped without chase.

It should have been easy, too, something for novices to practice out in the field, under the guide of a master — a noble woman of high stature with little in the way of family connections, had peeved off the wrong crowd of people with her love of fine dining paid for by her underpaid workers. Hardly paid for any guards, no questions would be asked, and she wouldn't be missed. Easy.

And yet, they still somehow messed it up.

The coffee was warm, barely a drinkable temperature, but he'd grown used to it over time. Handing a half-full mug to the younger whaler, he settled back in his seat, taking a large gulp and (regretfully) nearly emptying his fill in mere seconds.

Eirikur had settled with staring at the coffee, gaze distant and out of sorts. Clouded,  _dead_ , if Daud had to describe them. He'd seen it before, but his men preferred to keep to themselves in this matter, or take it up with whoever was commanding them at the time.

Most of them were a few years older when the time came, though.

"She looked at me," Eirikur's voice was a whisper, caught in his throat in rasped shreds of breath. His fingers tightened around the cup, with a paradoxical sense of gentle reverence for the coffee inside. It was a phrase Daud had heard countless times before, muttered behind masks in monotones not befitting anyone who dares dream of cleaner lives.

And yet they still do — at least, the younger whalers do. The street rats were always full of a strange sense of idealism when he takes them under his wing, it was cruel of him to let them hold onto that. Still, he did, weaning them slowly from their occasional flights of fancy in honest work (even with the childlike idealism, they were all bruised enough to know bread came first, wherever it was from) to sharpen them into loyal tools for his own use.

His lips thinned as he took another sip.

He'd asked this boy what his name was, and that had been a mistake.

"Eirikur," he started, snapping the boy out of a waking nightmare. The name sound foul on his tongue, bitter, even; he drank the last of his coffee to hide it. The apology would come next-

"Sorry, sir."

\- as it always did. Two words that'd harden his resolve in older men, leaving him with a choked throat with someone not even of age.

"Are you afraid?" It wasn't the best of questions, but he asked it in a sombre tone, quiet, even to his own ears. Of course the boy was afraid — he'd dragged himself under the guise of a plain poor night's sleep, but Daud knew it was gut wrenching memories that'd pulled the boy to the one place he felt he could be safe.

Had the whaler been older, he'd have known that Daud's office was not the safest place in the chamber of commerce, and never will be.

Still, Eirikur sat up, shifting out from behind the desk with a feigned fire in his eyes and a quick shake of his head.

"No, sir. I'm alright."

"Then why are you here?"

It did the trick, drawing that desperate desire for validation out from the whaler and replacing it with a twinge of regret, a wolfhound pup scolded for its mistake. For the first time that evening, Eirikur took a sip of the coffee, nose wrinkling in clear disgust as he put the mug on the side of the desk.  _What a waste_.

"It was warm, sir," Eirikur muttered, his hands wringing in the lap of his now crossed legs, staring deftly at a point on the floor just past Daud's feet. The movement of fingers mimicked someone lightly scraping away skin, not a harsh action, but the motion matched the downtrodden eyes too well. "Laid her down. Fabric of her shirt caught on my belt, sir, so I cut it off."

Daud brushed his fingers along the empty cup still nestled in his hands, brows furrowing in thought. Before he could take it in completely, however, Eirikur shifted his hand, reaching into the sleeve of his shirt. He drew out a small length of rich purple cloth, torn and frayed, toying with the loose cotton hanging from its edges.

A fine piece, but Daud couldn't help rubbing the bridge of his nose in tense frustration.

Still, it was unstained, and while he couldn't fathom the whaler's choice in taking a trophy home, he wasn't about to question it, either. Instead, he placed his own empty mug beside the whaler's, and offered a hand to the cloth — a request he couldn't help but notice that the whaler was a fraction too quick in answering.

"She screamed," Daud mused, turning the cloth over a few times, and glancing at the whaler who shied away with a nod. It was always the screams that made sleeping difficult, after all. Soon, more silence settled in, the faint whispers of the night patrols transversing being the only sound that flittered through the room.

"What was her name?" Eirikur mumbled, nails scratching against the worn carpet below him. "It's in the log book, right?"

Daud shook his head at the question, handing back the cloth as he stood to begin rearranging the desk to something akin to organised. Momentarily, he hesitated on a large map, buried under a few odd books (fiction, strangely enough, most likely left as gifts from a few of the more playful whalers). With care, he moved it away to a different desk, sure to avoid Eirikur's curious gaze on the piece. They had another week before their mission at the tower, and it wasn't an affair such a young novice should be involved in.

"It doesn't matter," he finally replied, clutching a book on the Pandyssian continent; it was safely discarded onto a stack of travel books, something Devon, one of the older recruits, had taken to collecting for him.

"Names are important though!" Sharp spoken, something Eirikur instantly regretted as he half-hid his face under the cloth piece in his hands. Not that it mattered, Daud had leaned back against a desk, arms folded, watching the display (the smallest tilt of his lips, betraying any anger Eirikur could expect from the master assassin). "Sorry... Sorry, sir. I just feel that-"

"I know."

It wouldn't do to send Eirikur out on the field again (at least, any time soon), so Daud picked a pen from beside him, writing down a short notice to Billie on the matter. He knew the boy's name, and Rulfio had mentioned in passing that he'd not taken well to the powers, but had a penchant for poisons and medicine.

They needed a new doctor, anyway.

"I want to remember her," the novice said, swirling the cloth around a thumb and scowling when it slipped to his lap.

"You don't need her name for that."

Daud flicked through an older book — his first log book, much smaller than the whaler's current book, and packed with names of the dead like a business obituary. Some had faded over time, along with the pages they were written on. A gloved thumb traced the small, finely written text, before shutting the cover and tossing it carelessly to one side. It stayed resolutely in his office for any blackmailing needs, and no other reasons besides.

"Names mean coin, Eirikur," he began, words slow and tentative, forming a thought pattern he hadn't even considered yet. Turning, he rested his hands against the desk, sight tracing over the still-quite-hideous mess. When one desk was cleaned, it always meant another would be filled with pointless junk; he'll ask Marco to sort it out, tomorrow. That man always seemed to like a tidy desk. His voice dipped to a hardly audible mumble, as he finished his thoughts with a (rather lame), "You shouldn't think about the targets behind them."

"They say your name on the streets, sir. Call you the knife of Dunwall. Tell stories, you know?" Eirikur said, voice low and more to himself than anything, "is it the same thing?"

"How many of those stories are true?"

Eirikur opened his mouth, answer clear on his face, but it's drowned as Daud's gaze moved to settle on the cloth in his hands.

"You already remember her, you don't need a name."

And he was right; though fleeting, Eirikur would remember it, over and over, until he was left with a life under the medic's tutelage and away from the usual rabble of murderers. Not everyone was cut out for work in assassinations, but Daud always found a use for the scraps picked up off the streets.

The boy got to his feet, head still bent low and hands still shuffling with the scrap of cloth. Daud was certain the conversation was over, sat back down besides the writing desk, moving the lamp closer to view the messy letters. Snatching the pen before it stained more paper with ink, he began a new letter, rewriting the one from before (starting with a name, as always — Hiram Burrows, the current royal spymaster). The words didn't come as smoothly as before, though, and he quietly cursed the whaler for side-tracking his resolute mind.

"Don't names mean people though, sir?"

He stopped mid-sentence, grip on the pen tightening as eyes narrowed at the half written correspondence; something that lead his whaler to step away from him, at the edge of his vision. A few silent seconds, drawn out in discomfort with only the sounds of their disjointed breathing as solace in the emptiness. Daud chose to drop the pen again, heavy sigh passing his lips as he turned back to the (now too persistently curious) whaler.

"People are..." he stopped. Whatever he said now would be a complete lie to his own actions and he  _knew_  it. Another silence, filled with impatient shuffling feet this time. "Names are...”

It didn't matter. Eirikur had already proved himself as outside killing for money, and would probably hear a forced lie regardless of how hard he swallowed the bitterness of it.

Again, his eye crossed over to the current log book he'd signed before the whaler had wandered in, ink now dry through the course of their conversation. He couldn't remember a thing about any of the targets, memories all blurred in a mass of blood and corpses.

"People aren't names, they're something else,"  _you know that, more than I do_. His thought went unfinished, and the stab to his pride would lend him to demand the whaler to leave if it weren't for the heaviness that lack of sleep brought.

Eirikur scowled from his side, before his being shook with a long yawn, lending a soft, mirthful huff from Daud in reply (another sharp glare, but Daud dismissed it with a wave and upturn corners of his lips. The boy was still young, after all).

"Speak with Rulfio in the morning, he'll direct you to Walter."

"The medic, sir?"

Daud nodded, ignoring the confusion evident in Eirikur's tone.

"Training will start in the afternoon, one o'clock, sharp. Understood?"

The sheer intensity of the boy's beaming smile left Daud shifting back, plagued with more confusion than Eirikur held for his statement. Surely, medicine wasn't  _that_  interesting?

It was infectious, though, and he felt another huff of barely-there laughter. It'd have been easier to send him on his way with a bag of coins — assassins work was never going to be his strong point, and Daud had cursed himself for considering otherwise long ago. But the boy would never have been anything more than a factory worker, and he couldn't help but feel it was such a waste of valuable intellect.

He shooed Eirikur away towards the door, ushering the boy to head back to sleep (while his spirits were still high). Eirikur stuffed the cloth back into his sleeve, something Daud still felt a small pinch of regret over (he was tired, it could be excused), and bounded towards the door with far more enthusiasm than anyone should have at three in the morning, thanking Daud on his way.

But the boy paused by the door, turning back to the older whaler.

"Aren't you going to sleep, sir?"

Worry. It was something Daud often heard from his whalers, and especially the younger ones. A sign of loyalty that was still welcome despite its irritance.

"I'll sleep soon, once this work is finished," he offered a light nod in feigned reassurance, sight not moving from the letter before him. It didn't seem to deter the far-too stubborn whaler, though, as he took a step back towards his desk. Lighter, this time, something in his step mimicked the playful whalers too acutely and, on instinct, Daud steeled himself for whatever was to come-

"Do I need to tell Thomas that you're still awake, sir?"

And yet he still wasn't ready for it.

"No," his answer was far too quick to be subtle, pen slipping from his grip in a haphazard drop beside the paper as he turned to glance at Eirikur, eyes sharper than need be in the dull room, "no, that won't be necessary."

Still, the chiming hum from the younger whaler left him clearly defeated, as Eirikur offered him a toothy grin and swung on his feet to turn back out the door.

The click sounded softly in the room, and Daud sorely considered heading straight to bed before any more unwarranted mischief caught up with him. Instead, his eyes settled on the mugs at the edge of his desk — one empty, one still half full, the coffee long since gone cold — and drew a bitter laugh.

With a few final strokes of his pen, he signed off the letter, condemning another name to a price in coin.


End file.
